Rabbit & Co


Last time the Year of the Rabbit came around, I was enlightened to the fact that in Vietnam they celebrate the year of the Cat rather than the Rabbit. A little research this time around and I learned that the Gurung of Nepal also use the Cat, while the Malays use the Mousedeer!

That sounded to me like a good excuse to draw a Rabbit/Cat/Mousedeer crew for the year of the Water Rabbit (and Cat and Mousedeer). And hey, this time I actually finished the drawing in time!

Okay ya nerds, Gong Xi Fa Cai! ✌️

Wayback Wabbit

This one is going WAY wayback, two full zodiac cycles back to the Year of the Rabbit 1999! 😬

The drawing on the right is the original–back then I could not run Photoshop on what I’m sure was a very busted, dusty, and ancient PC. So, in my pre-digital era, I would draw and ink the lineart on paper, make photocopies of the finished inks, and color over one of the photocopies with markers or color pencils. I did it this way so that if I screwed up the colors, I wouldn’t have destroyed the original lineart too… and trust me, I screwed up the colors plenty of times!

The drawing on the left is a scan of the lineart, with brand-new digital 2023 colors. I always find it a fun exercise to color old lineart… it’s like a collab with your younger self. 💀⌛️👶

Pinstripes and Booo-llets

I was having a conversation with Josh over IM which lead to me proposing a hi-larious image, which lead to me drawing said image because it was suitable for Halloween. Here it is:

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You see, they’ll never take him alive, because he’s already dead. GET IT?? I TOLD YOU I’M HI-LARIOUS! HAPPY HALLOWEEN, SUCKERS!

(I’m behind a post, but I have stuff incoming later this week… )

More Snow Than Man…

As per the traditions of my people (my people = procrastinating nerdy illustrators), I’m posting a Christmas blog barely in time for the holiday.

Today’s drawing is an homage to the holiday season, the Aurora Borealis, and to Shotaro Ishinomori, the father of the Japanese Superhero. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the cyborg snowman, SNOWBORG 12-25!

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This was supposed to be quick and simple, but I got really into making it SHINY in the coloring stage. Since I haven’t been doing much digital coloring recently, I think maybe this was exactly the right thing to get me to brush the dust off the old tablet.

Happy Holidays to you and yours, dear reader!

Wolf Down All Your Candy

Take note, waiters and waitresses: If there are colored pencils left behind at my table because children were amongst the previous occupants of said table, I will draw a werewolf on my placemat:

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Basic line-work was all finished at the restaurant, a few months ago. Further color pencil rendering, computer clean-up/effects/type were done this morning. Because I care that much about you, Dear Reader.

Happy Halloween! I’m gonna watch Troll Hunter and have a Newcastle Werewolf ale tonight.

AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Corny.

Still working on Help the Cheerleader commissions, naturally, but this week I’m taking a break to post something else…

If I happen to come across an orange and a yellow marker as a pair, my brain immediately sets itself towards the drawing of a candy corn-motiffed woman who is armed with a candy corn chained flail and vaguely Audrey Hepburn-esque style. And here she is:

I drew this several weeks ago, but since October and November is the season of the candy corn, I saved it until now.

[RABBIT PUN OR ROBOT PUN HERE]

I set up another Sculpey project for my niece and I, very similar to last year’s project. It’s not just the Year of the Rabbit, it’s the Year of the METAL Rabbit, so I chose a robotic rabbit as our subject. Here are the results:

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The gold rabbit with the red eyes is mine, the silver one with the dark blue eyes is my niece’s, and the terra cotta one at the bottom is the prototype that I made while planning the project. If you’re curious about the process, please check out last year’s project (the process we used for this year was very similar). I would point out that my rabbit has extra “rivets” in the ears–I wasn’t sure how I felt about that (maybe it’s too busy?), so I didn’t have my niece add that to her sculpture. All in all, I think these turned out nicely!

One of my brothers-in-law observed that the rabbits have a Cylon-esque quality. However, knowing myself, if there’s any subconscious sci-fi influence at work here, it’s probably from the Daleks! For the record, if this post had been made a month later, the title would have been EASTERMINATE!!!